Cafeterias may be a bit less crowded on April 4.

Last night, the Student Government Association requested that the Saint Louis University community observe an April 4 boycott of Sodexho-Marriott food services.

Jobs With Justice and the U.S. Student Association deem April 4 the Day of Action on Student Labor. Leaders from the national student group Not With Our Money: Students Stop Prisons-For-Profit are encouraging students from the 400+ campuses serviced by Sodexho-Marriott to refrain from eating in cafeterias and food courts on Tuesday, April 4.

According to the Prison Moratorium Project, Sodexho Alliance is “the largest single investor in the world’s biggest private prison company, with an 11 percent investment in Corrections Corporation of America and nine percent of the outstanding shares of Prison Realty Trust.”

“Basically, Sodexho, one of the large stockholders in CCA, makes profits off putting people in jail and taking away any kind of reform programs for the prisoners,” said student Brian Tiburzi.

After Tiburzi discovered the information via an e-mail activist group, his roommate, junior Brian Suda, decided to take the information to the SGA. “The resolution would be a little more powerful if we have the student senate act, representing the student body. People might be more apt to participate.”

Senator Rich Bergin, who presented the bill to the senate, explained SLU’s role. “It’s a statement to show them that we have a strong belief in human rights and will not tolerate injustice in prisons,” Bergin said.

He relayed one account of a woman who died in labor after she did not receive any attention despite her hours of crying out in the CCA prison.

In another instance, the Colorado ACLU filed suit against CCA’s private prisoner transport company on behalf of a woman who claimed that members of her all-male transport crew sexually assaulted her repeatedly during her five-day trip from Texas to Colorado.

“By the SGA senate supporting this boycott, it will help get people aware,” said Bergin. “However, this is not an attack on the employees who serve us or the food we are served.”

Bergin advises that although some students may feel that Sodexho-Marriott already has their money because of their meal plans, to abstain from eating in those establishments will send a message to Sodexho-Marriott that student money will not support for-profit prisons who mistreat inmates.

Sodexho-Marriott Services SLU General Manager Bill McGeorge had not been made aware of the boycott until the SGA brought it forward on March 15. “I sent it on to the District Manager,” McGeorge said. “We were the first university to bring it to my district manager’s attention. They’re researching it.”

In the event of a massive boycott, McGeorge affirmed that service would continue as normal.

“Because they are human-rights offenders and we are a Jesuit institution, I see no problem with supporting this boycott,” summarized senator Dana Naughton.

Bergin added, “SGA stood on its own two feet in support of human rights.”